Quotes About Author

after that I can die in peace instead of having to explain the most elementary matters to absurdly credulous halfwits. And

Whereas the Enlightenment had found its model in China, Romanticism turned to India, the source of all mysticism (Schwab 1984; Halbfass 1988).

To me it was obvious that experimental literature was experimenting on the reader, and Hanna didn't need that and neither did I.

But what gave rise to the swaggering self-righteousness I so often encountered among these students? How could one feel guilt and shame, and at the same time parade one's self-righteousness?

earthquake P-waves had reportedly been made with microphones

T]he infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

Politics is largely governed by sententious platitudes which are devoid of truth

Good and bad, and even the higher good that mysticism finds everywhere, are the reflections of our own emotions on other things, not part of the substance of things as they are in themselves.

My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.....Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion has gone hand-in-hand.

To preserve hope in our world makes calls upon our intelligence and our energy. In those who despair it is frequently the energy that is lacking.

Mathematics takes us still further from what is human into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual world, but ever possible world, must conform.

All joy in true thought is part of the intellectual love of God

His most important books are his two Logics, and these must be understood if the reasons for his views on other subjects are to be rightly apprehended.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. Bertrand Russell

The accusation of metaphysics has become in philosophy something like the accusation of being a security risk in the public service. I do not for my part know what is meant by the word 'metaphysics'. The only definition I have found that fits all cases is: 'a philosophical opinion not held by the present author'.

I do not like mystical language, and yet I hardly know how to express what I mean without employing phrases that sound poetic rather than scientific.

But in fact, while some aspects of history can be made more or less scientific, and while it is important to do this wherever it is possible, the material is too complex to be reduced to scientific laws at present, and probably for centuries to come.

This is one of those views which are so absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them.

My first book of stories was 'Satan in the Suburbs'. The title story was in part suggested to me by a stranger whom I met in Mortlake and who, when he saw me, crossed the road and made the sign of the Cross as he went.

But history is perhaps an even better antidote to anarchic individualism as well as to a lifeless traditionalism

while some aspects of history can be made more or less scientific, and while it is important to do this wherever it is possible, the material is too complex to be reduced to scientific laws at present, and probably for centuries to come.

He had a great intellectual influence upon my generation, though in retrospect I do not think it was a very good one.

Those who affirm positively that God exists cannot avoid falling into an impiety. For if they say that God controls everything, they make Him the author of evil things; if, on the other hand, they say that He controls some things only, or that He controls nothing, they are compelled to make God either grudging or impotent, and to do that is quite obviously an impiety.